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Prey patch adds major stuttering to PS4 version, "worst ever" frame pacing
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
InquisitorAles
Member
So, Dishonored 2 was fine on consoles and runs like shit on PC, and now Prey is amazing on PC and horrible on consoles?
D2 wasn't worse on PC than consoles though.
GodParticle
Member
And here I was gonna pick it up during that target sale. Fuck that now
Or Crytek don't care.
While Arkane is reduced to Homer trying to make breakfast while working with this engine on the PS4.
Gnome Scat
Member
Was just about to start playing this again, guess I'll wait.
The Last Wizard
Member
And people in the pro update thread were talking smack about those who decided to wait before they purchased😂
Mr. PlayStation
Member
It's a shame that PS4 Pro takes the heat instead of the the QA team at the studio behind, that gave the patch a go!
SmokedMeat
Gamer™
Freezasaurus
Member
Sucks that it turned out this way. I finished the game a week or so after it launched, so I came away with a good experience. Hope it gets fixed.
Karspankey
Banned
Sigh... I'll be able to play this game someday...
Bought digitally so I'm stuck waiting for a patch. Wish Sony would get with the times and offer refunds.
Bought digitally so I'm stuck waiting for a patch. Wish Sony would get with the times and offer refunds.
7DollarHagane
Banned
The input lag was just fine in the last patch before this one.. I hope they can get it sorted in the next patch.
Yeah, the Pro implementation is fine and not the problem here. The issues with this patch impact the game on all PS4 systems.
Basileus777
Member
Own goal is not a common term used in the US. I had to reread that sentence because at first glance I thought it was a grammatical mistake.
TetraGenesis
Member
Clarification for people that didn't watch the video, the frame pacing problems were introduced in a patch prior to the Pro patch. The frame pacing is a result of some solution they took to resolve input lag. The Pro patch hasn't had a negative effect on performance; the problem is it's hard to appreciate those improvements when a previous patch introduced so much judder into the experience. They need to scale back their input lag fixes (unfortunately), not their Pro improvements, to fix the frame pacing.
show me your skeleton
Member
mom's covfefe
Pandora012
Member
Unfortunately I can't see the vid, but I wonder if it's just more noticeable on Pro. I played this on an earlier patch and besides like 2 instances were things ran choppy, everything else was fine. Well besides that stick drift, which has been patched out.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
Maybe they should drop the PS4 and Pro version to 900p too, lol.
Sixfortyfive
He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
Trying to find that old anagram thread entry that flipped their name to "Beta Shed."
AtomicShroom
Member
My guess is that the reason the game was suffering from input lag to begin with was because it employed some form of frame buffering (triple buffering maybe?) that gave the game more control in the way it presented frames, and could ensured they were delivered in a more timely manner. This made the delivery of frames very smooth, at the expensive of input lag.
So if you remove a buffer like that, you take away the ability of the game to cope with late frames, and if the underlying engine is not properly optimized, there's no easy way to fix that. The horrible framepacing we're seeing now is probably the very reason they implemented that buffering method to begin with, without ever realizing it introduced input latency (because most people are oblivious to it). So I'm guessing they went with a very simple fix, removing the buffer, but much deeper optimization work would need to be done to get the game running smoothly without it, and it might be so complicated (since you know, reworking an engine's inner workings might break a gazillion other things) that they didn't have time or are simply unwilling to put in that kind of effort and time (and thus money).
Barring a very powerful CPU, you need to have FRAPS on in the background to get The Evil Within to run at 60fps without noticeable frame-pacing issues. No one fucking knows why.
Fbh
Member
Well one game to scratch from the buy list. Thankfully there are plenty of other good games to play.
Good thing I wasn't excited about this because the more I read about it the more it sounds like bargain bin material (at least on Ps4)
Since framepacing isnt really related to the strenghts of the hardware this wouldn't help
Good thing I wasn't excited about this because the more I read about it the more it sounds like bargain bin material (at least on Ps4)
Since framepacing isnt really related to the strenghts of the hardware this wouldn't help
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
That's not what causes frame pacing.
grandwizard
Member
DH2 wasn't fine on consoles. It's capped at 30fps so it was less obvious the performance issues it had.
The console FOV bug seems like it should be straightforward to analyse.
I've tested this on the demo, and it replicates there, suggesting that this has been an issue all along (given that, to my knowledge, the demo has not been updated since the game launched).
How to test it:
When going to the inventory for the first time after a load/area transition the FOV doesn't zoom out/increase as the inventory opens, but it does zoom in/decrease when closing the inventory. Subsequent inventory opens (after the initial one) do then zoom out/in (when the inventory page opens/closes), but, because the initial one didn't zoom out, the result is that the zoomed-in FOV remains as default (until another load etc).
Hopefully I've explained that clearly.
I've tested this on the demo, and it replicates there, suggesting that this has been an issue all along (given that, to my knowledge, the demo has not been updated since the game launched).
How to test it:
When going to the inventory for the first time after a load/area transition the FOV doesn't zoom out/increase as the inventory opens, but it does zoom in/decrease when closing the inventory. Subsequent inventory opens (after the initial one) do then zoom out/in (when the inventory page opens/closes), but, because the initial one didn't zoom out, the result is that the zoomed-in FOV remains as default (until another load etc).
Hopefully I've explained that clearly.
Hell, it was actually still very obvious, but a game not hitting 30 in many situations on a console seems to be fine, while not getting 60 on ultra settings on a PC is the end of the world.
I don't have the exact FPS numbers for Dishonored 2, but I'm guessing it's like: Going from 30fps to 20fps is a lot less jarring than 60 to 20.
I played the entire demo and got frequent drops even on low-medium settings.
Man, holy shit, what a nightmare. And to think I almost bought a copy yesterday... Glad I went for The Surge instead.
I really, really want to support Arkane because I love their output (plus Prey looks fantastic), but not like this... Here's hoping they can somewhat fix this before the game is $10 lol.
I really, really want to support Arkane because I love their output (plus Prey looks fantastic), but not like this... Here's hoping they can somewhat fix this before the game is $10 lol.
D
Deleted member 325805
Unconfirmed Member
The way I see it is 30 is the bare minimum to even be playable, so dropping under that is just unacceptable. Dropping from 60 to 50 isn't ideal but it's better than dropping from 30 to 20.
To be fair, I suspect it's not as simple as that, you often hear of issues discovered by QA teams not being fixable in time for release.
Though that would beg the question of why they couldn't delay the patch, but again I suspect it's not as straightforward an answer as it may seem.
psychotron
Member
Seems that way. Hopefully they figure out a balance.
MultiCore
Member
Maybe 2 prerendered frames? Some sort of... double... buffering perhaps?
psychotron
Member
I have no idea. I'm not educated enough in that area to even pose a theoretical solution, lol.
MeBecomingI
Member
This is a damn shame. I was really looking forward to finally picking this up soon. I think I'll hold off and work on other games in my crowded backlog.
I hope they get this sorted soon. I guess I could buy it on the PC... gah. Might have to flip a coin, haha.
I hope they get this sorted soon. I guess I could buy it on the PC... gah. Might have to flip a coin, haha.
blastprocessor
The Amiga Brotherhood
Cry Engine is the best
That's true, but I thought it would be worth pointing out it was already used in the UK.
That way we could think about whether it was already used in the US, perhaps 'brought over' from the UK, and/or it was suddenly introduced or popularised because of a single event.
There are many ways languages change and words and phrases are spread. I was giving a bit more context for that, especially when we can acquire each others' phrases so easily.
ArkhamFantasy
Member
Frame Pacing seems to be a difficult problem to get rid of, even really good studios have trouble fixing it.
psychotron
Member
It's easily my most hated issue this gen. That's why I'm so happy that Dark10x finds it so annoying. It at least gets exposure.
D
Deleted member 325805
Unconfirmed Member
I love Digital Foundry, without them devs would get away with so much bullshit without anyone making a peep about it. Nothing ruins games more for me than performance issues and they're so often ignored in reviews. Frame pacing errors feel exactly like constant frame rate drops so it's just as bad.